The Security Blog

Over the last week, some people have claimed that

(a) there is no Cyberwar going on, or

(b) there is no such thing as a Cyberwar, or

(c) they do not know what a Cyberwar is

Unlike old times, where a formal declaration of war was made before the actual combat, modern times often have that announcement, if at all, in the midst of fighting.

What is better (worse) that having one of the sides, or both, declare that a Cyberwar is in effect to assuage the doubters’ minds?

In our case, see the following declaration made by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hasan Qashqavi:

…foreign media organizations, such as CNN and BBC, [are] mouthpieces of their respective governments that were exaggerating reports of police clashes with protesters who have demonstrated daily since the June 12 race.

He also said that

…government-run news sites, such as the Iranian Student’s News Agency, had been hacked in recent days

and implied foreign outlets were behind it.

And finally:

“Isn’t it a cyber war of the media with an independent government?” Qashqavi said. “They ask people to use the DOS (denial of service) system to hack our Web sites.”

Hats, salted or not, available on eBay.

Permalink

Cyberwar Weapon Sharing

And the attacks are getting more detailed with websites and even TOOL PACKAGES being distributed:

02:18 xxxxx How to DDOS (in a good way) Iran’s state-run media website. Please RT. http://twurl.nl/xxxxx #iranelection

And

02:19 Cyberwar DDoS package being distributed to take down Iranian gov sites. http://tinyurl.com/xxxxGet flood and ping flood. <– the tool was aptly named, StopAhmadiOnline.zip

And, of course, facebook is harnessed to the effort and used to disseminate information about the status and about the DDoS attacks:

Open Proxy Sharing Facebook is even used to disseminate info, both inside Iran and out, on how to bypass government filters, for example using open proxies:

Permalink